Thursday: Sheet-Pan Breakfast, Road-Trip Taste Tests & Re-Entry Dinner

Thursday was travel-home day, which meant the goal was to get everyone fed, get the car loaded, and get ourselves back home without making food any more complicated than it needed to be.

One Last Lake-House Breakfast

Before we left, everyone got a solid breakfast. And this is basically what breakfast looked like most mornings of the trip.

You guys know I spent the couple weeks before we left making extra bacon every time I cooked it. I would par-cook it, freeze it, and then bring all of that bacon with us.

To reheat it, I just took a big sheet pan, lined it with a little parchment paper, and added however many slices of frozen cooked bacon we needed. Then I’d fill the rest of the pan with whatever everyone wanted that morning: mini bagels, toast, whatever bread we had.

The whole thing went straight into the oven together until everything was hot.

And I should point out: this isn’t just a vacation trick. I do this at home all the time. I frequently keep cooked bacon in my refrigerator or freezer, and the sheet-pan method is one of my favorite ways to reheat breakfast for a bunch of people at once.

No toaster necessary.

Road-Trip Food and a Very Important Gummy Taste Test

Then we loaded up the car and headed home.

Obviously, we couldn’t make a four-hour drive without conducting another highly scientific gummy taste test.

We stopped at Buc-ee’s and tried several different kinds, and the consensus was that they were all very good. But I think the Swedish Fish won this round, mostly because we don’t get those very often.

We also stopped at Chick-fil-A for lunch.

My usual order when I want something gluten- and dairy-free is the Southwest salad with grilled nuggets, no cheese, and the balsamic vinaigrette.

Sadly, I also have to leave off the tortilla strips because they contain dairy. Why tortilla strips need dairy remains a mystery to me, but here we are.

The First Thing I Do When We Get Home

As soon as we got home, I unloaded the food cooler.

And one thing I always travel with is a refrigerator/cooler thermometer.

I don’t like guessing when it comes to food temperatures. Coolers can warm up, and rental-house refrigerators are notoriously unpredictable. Sometimes they’re freezing your lettuce; sometimes they’re practically defrosting your yogurt.

Having a thermometer lets me actually know how cold my food stayed instead of trying to guess whether something is still safe to keep.

Apparently We Have Raspberries

While we were unpacking, one of the kids headed outside and discovered that our raspberries had been very busy while we were gone.

We had a huge harvest waiting for us.

I did manage to get a picture of what remained after everyone started eating them, particularly my four-year-old, who apparently considers freshly picked raspberries payment for helping with the harvest.

The Re-Entry Hunger

Of course, people were hungry before dinner.

I had brought home a little bit of the leftover meatloaf from our trip, so I cut it into meatloaf bites and reheated those in a pan for anyone who needed something substantial.

This is one of the reasons I don’t mind bringing leftovers home from vacation if they’ve stayed properly chilled. We walked in the door and immediately had food available.

Easy Adaptable Re-Entry Dinner

For dinner, I wanted the easiest possible re-entry meal.

I had a bag of cooked rotisserie chicken in my freezer, so I pulled that out and reheated it. Then I cooked some angel hair pasta and green beans and put out a bunch of toppings and extras.

Everyone could build whatever sounded good.

Some kids wanted chicken, pasta and green beans completely separate. Others could layer everything together, add some vinaigrette and make it more of a pasta bowl situation.

I also cut up a watermelon I already had at home, and dinner was done.

Nothing elaborate. Nothing I had to think very hard about. Just good food that everyone could arrange however they wanted it after a travel day.

And, perhaps most importantly, I made enough that there were leftovers for Chris to take to work Friday.

That is exactly the kind of re-entry dinner I want waiting for me after a trip: adaptable, filling, familiar and requiring almost no actual cooking.